ARIZONA DAILY STAR
July 9, 2012
Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems has been awarded a six-year, $636 million contract to continue developing and providing an interceptor warhead for the nation’s emerging ground-based missile defense system.
Raytheon provides the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) to Boeing Co., the prime contractor for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense program.
The EKV, the intercept component of the ground-based interceptor, is a non-explosive warhead designed to track high-speed ballistic missile warheads and destroy them in space by sheer impact.
Under a contract that extends through November 2018, Raytheon will provide EKV development, fielding, testing, system engineering, integration, configuration management, equipment manufacturing and refurbishment, and operation and sustainment, the company said.
The EKV has had eight successful test flights and eight failures since 1999.
The system is awaiting a key flight test later this year to confirm correction of a guidance problem that caused an intercept failure in December 2010. The interceptor also failed a flight test in January 2010 due to a problem traced to a sea-based radar system.
Thirty ground-based interceptors are installed at Fort Greely, Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.
Link to original article on azstarnet.com.
